Raven: three futures
by Chameleons
Summary: This about the three futures Raven could have had if things had gone differently. Authors note explains what they are in more detail. (rated M for safety - they may be maturity warnings) Please read the authors not to make it easier to understand. Dedicated to the first person to review! :)
1. Free: 1

**Hi fandom! This story is basically about three futures Raven could have had.**

**1. If she hadn't been taken in by the Furan's in the first place**

**2. If she had escaped from the glass house.**

**3. If she had gone through with the mission she was given at the end of aftershock and killed Nero.**

**They will go in that order and they will be called: 1-free 2-escaped 3-assassin**

**Hope you enjoy this peeps, I know it's a bit depressing to start with but it will lighten up and become more exciting. Oh and all the characters belong to mark walden except the ones I may make up along the way ;) i don't know yet. The first bit is taken straight from book so if you know it well you might want to skim read it. PLEASE REVIEW!**

Natalya climbed up a fire escape on the side of a disused factory building leading to the roof. she dropped down through one of the dirty skylights and onto the floor of the long-abandoned attic that was her current bolt hole. She headed over to a table on the far side and lit the oil lantern that stood on it. In the small pool of yellow light she examined the contents of the stolen bag.

"how many times have I got to tell you," a voice said from the shadows, "you don't work on my turf." Natalya spun round as four boys in their late teens emerged from the darkness at the other end of the room. "What? Did you think I wouldn't be able find you? You thieve on my patch and I will always know where you are. Now we're going to have to teach you a lesson, you know, just to make sure you understand the rules," the leader said as he walked towards her.

"I'm sorry, Boris,' Natalya said as the boys moved to surround her. "I'll give you a cut of my take. Hey, you can have it all if you want. I don't want any trouble."

"Too late for that - you had your chance. In fact, I think I will be the one giving you the cut, yes?" he said, pulling a knife from his pocket and holding it up in front of him.

One of the other boys lunged for Natalya but she quickly dodged sideways and punched him in the mouth. He staggered sideways clutching at his mouth, blood oozing between his fingers. Boris watched as the other two uninjured boys ran at Natalya and she dropped low, her foot lashing out at one of the boys' ankles and sending him flying. As he hit the ground with a thud the other boy grabbed the Natalya's arm and she spun round, driving her fist straight into his nose and knocking him backwards. She turned back towards Boris just in time to see him coming before he slammed into her and knocked her to the ground. He pinned her down and held the knife in front of her face, the light from the lantern glinting on it's blade.

"And now I'm going to make an example of you,' he said, bringing the knife to within a couple of millimetres of her eye. Natalya's heart was pounding right out of her chest, her vision was unable to focus on anything despite the blade coming ever closer to her eyeball. Using the last of her strength she managed to get her foot up and deliver a powerful kick to Boris's gut. He spun back but she had misjudged the direction he would move. He had instinctively lashed out with the knife carving a deep cut into Natalya's cheek. Blood streamed down one side of her face but she knew she had only a few moments before Boris would attack again. The knife had spun out of his hand when he had hit the floor and Natalya scrambled to get it. Knife in hand she approached Boris who was starting to recover from his fall. Without thinking she plunged the knife deep into his chest then recoiled back in horror at what she done.

Natalya had never killed anyone before, she moved quickly to his side and was haunted by the expression in his eyes. There was less blood that you'd expect but it was still pooling steadily onto the floor boards. Boris made a horrible sort of strangled choking sound, then his whole body went limp. It felt like a bomb had exploded in her brain and it took several seconds for it to tick over. She pressed her back against the wall and felt cold inside. After a while she realised she'd have to dispose of the bodies. The light was starting to dim and she planned to dump the bodies in the river when it was dark waited in her attic for an hour or so until the sky had darkened sufficiently to work as cover. Natalya used the time to tend to her cheek, using the needle and thread she carried in her pocket to haphazardly stitch up the cut on her face.

Natalya heaved Boris' heavy frame onto her shoulders and made her way out of the warehouse, trying to ignore the incessant dripping of the boys blood onto her shoulder. She made her way through a mess of alleyways and backstreets inhabited only by cutthroats and the like. After a while she reached her destination, it was the only spot where there was access to the river but all the houses where facing away. Natalya waded through a huge pile of rubbish and set Boris down on the edge of the river. His head was lolling, his eyes wide open and glassy, Natalya could hardly bear to look at him. She had heard the rumours of the people who dumped bodies in the river and they said 'a dead body always surfaces eventually'. She realised she was going to have to fill his pockets with stones. Natalya scrambled about the rubbish and piles of dirt until she found enough suitably sized stones. As quickly as she could, she didn't like the idea of coming into contact with a dead body, she filled his pockets with stones and flung him out into the river. He sank almost immediately a few bubbles arising from the water's surface before the disturbance settled.

She dragged the other unconscious gang members one by one to different places around the town so they were separate from each other. When they awoke they would remember where she was so she would have to move in the morning.

Natalya made her way back to the attic and relit the mercifully undamaged gas lamp. In the corner she found the mess of grubby blankets where she slept. The woman's handbag was lying near it but Natalya realised she couldn't touch anything inside it without invoking bad memories. She pulled herself up so her elbow were outside of the skylight and chucked the bag down the side of the alleyway where one of the gangs would pick it up. Natalya picked up the gas lantern from the table and carried it carefully to the corner where she slept. She curled up among the blankets swaddling them round her for warmth. She ended up in a foetal position surrounded by cloth and bathed in the light from the lantern. The hard wood of the floorboards pressed into her shoulder, the blankets were thin and stiff, but she had learned to tolerate this and she knew that in a day this was as close as she got to comfort. She cleared her head, focusing on the light and nothing else; and then, when her eyelids were drooping she leaned up and blew out the lamp.

Natalya's night was plagued with nightmares, Boris taking a starring role. But at the back of her mind there was something else, faces she had never seen before. A man with a buzz cut and a hand gun, and a woman with straight dark hair and a suit. The pair lingered in the back of every dream, punctuating each nightmare with the sense that something was not as it should be. She awoke every so often, mostly from the cold wind that whistled through the cracks in the skylights. She felt a strange sense of helplessness, like she was coming to the end of a line, something was wrong, and someone was out there to put it right.


	2. Free: 2

**Hola! here is another update. Thanks so much to Yours Truly Angry Mob for reviewing! Please review if you read this, for some reason it only appears on my profile and not anywhere else.**

Raven attacks again!

The famous criminal, who goes by the name of Raven, has attacked again. Raven runs a group of highly trained criminals, some of which only children, who frequently target buildings of high value. Last night an insider in Raven's gang reported that the attack on the huge multi-storey apartments of Belvitz, identifying Raven as the ringleader. There was over one million pounds worth of damage to the building, including a few small detonating charges, the amount stolen is yet to be determined though it is predicted to be millions.

Raven can be identified by dark hair, blue eyes and a scar down one cheek. If you see her please call our hotline - 0110 0110 - calls will not be charged.

Raven threw down the newspaper and stared with a calm smile at the faces that surrounded her. They were all ages, all wearing expressions of fear and confusion. A small girl who was about twelve chipped in,

"Surely they'll find us this time?" Raven smiled slightly,

"I doubt it, Kira, seeing as we're not going to be here this time tomorrow." There was a collective gasp,

"We're relocating?" an older man asked. Raven turned towards him,

"Someone has tipped off the police, It may be someone in this room or it may be someone who we have dealt with before. It would be unsafe to remain here." Raven's gang was six people, Kira, the younger girl, Ralf, an older man. There were girl and boy twins, Xenia and Carl, aged fourteen, who both had dead straight dark hair. The fifth and sixth members were Albert and Alina, a married couple in their early twenties and complete opposites of each other, Alina had blue eyes and blonde hair and Albert had dark curly hair and almost black eyes. Raven knew each and everyone of them enough to know they hadn't snitched because they all depended on each other. Raven had accumulated these allies over the years of thieving on the streets of Moscow.

Kira had been the first, a quiet seven year old at the time who scavenged the rubbish bins. She met Albert and Alina after they pinned Kira in an alleyway thinking she could be used as a hostage. Then came Ralph who always seemed to be able to find a supply some food, he didn't come on the main operations. It amazed Raven how a wizened old man would be able to acquire so many tinned delicacies. Xenia and Carl had been the last, organising their own coordinated robberies on small shops. Raven trusted all of them but she had never diverged her real name.

Relocating was such a shock because they had established a pretty good base where they were now. It was in the basement of an abandoned building, but over time the gang had improved it fortifying the entrance with scraps of metal. There were three large rooms, one where they all slept, another where they stored food and the stuff they got from the robberies, and a third which was the main area, used for cooking, planning, training, eating etc. It wasn't much but compared the the temporariness of the places where they had all lived before having a solid base was a comfort.

"When are we going to move?" Alina asked calmly,

"Early tomorrow I think" Raven rubbing her eyes and suddenly looking tired.

"You should take a rest" said Albert in a measured voice, "you have been awake for nearly 48 hours."

"I know I know" Raven replied, the truth was that she was scared. In essence the attack on the Belvitz should have been like any other just on a larger scale. It had got close, though, at one point...

Raven was trapped as the flames pressed in from all sides. The exit to the stairwell was still clear and she dived for it, slamming the fire doors behind her. She sprinted up the stairs, the sound of her footsteps echoing up the many floors. At each level she stopped only to see the fire doors were holding back a torrent of flames. The smell of smoke was acrid and Raven's lung's tore out of her chest like they were going to burst. She pushed herself up the final flight and found to her relief the roof was still clear. She pumped her legs hard against the Tarmac, the posh building had a helipad on the roof for the most high status of residents. She reached the edge and slammed into the safety rail her heart jumping into her mouth as she stared down the dizzying drop that went straight down to the concrete below. Raven spun around wildly looking for an escape. There was a maintenance lift a hundred metres away that had been fitting the apartments with floor to ceiling, panoramic windows. Raven made for the lift but as the flames danced ever closer, a silhouette flickered past. She paused to pull her gun and cocked it, twitching it about the ever advancing wall of light. After a moment she gave up and sprinted towards the lift. Suddenly something fell on her and she almost cried out in surprise. In her hands was a dead bird, a raven.

She had almost made it to the lift now but the heat was so great that it felt like it was being absorbed by her body, making it slower and more cumbersome. She clattered into the lift and quickly pulled the lever to begin her descent. Raven fought back a cough as she watched the part of the roof she had been on just seconds ago become succumbed by flames. She sunk down until she was sitting in the corner off the lift, breathing heavily. Raven stared up at the painfully thin wire suspending the lift in which she sat. Before the attack, Raven had made a couple of quick calls to the company that supplied the lifts, and she had been assured that they were covered in completely fireproof casings. Bur, from bitter experience she didn't think anything was truly fireproof. The fire on top of the building heightened and Raven fixed her eyes on it anxiously. Suddenly two figures appeared seemingly from the flames to right on the edge of the building. One pulled a gun,

"No!" Raven yelled getting to her feet as he aimed it at the wire. The shot fired, the sound impossibly loud even heard even above the roar of the building disintegrating. The shot hit the wire and Raven watched powerlessly as the tightly coiled wire split in two. She gripped the railing tightly as the carriage went into free fall, plummeting faster and faster towards the ground. Then it impacted.

The cart touched the ground with a gentle thud, and Raven stepped out slightly shakily. She glanced up toward the roof but the figures had gone. The wire securing the lift was fully intact. The dead bird however lay almost perfectly preserved in the lift. Raven rubbed her eyes, it was getting worse.


End file.
